Seeing and Hearing Information about the Queens and Long Island NY Real Estate market.
Currently Serving and dealing with Queens and Nassau New York Real Estate.

May 07, 2007

Is it really all because of your mortgage?

It is true, there are alot of foreclosures that are starting to pop up quicker than the dandelion weeds - I have been keeping tabs on what is coming up and what has actually been auctioned off already and to be quite honest, some of the auctioned property was only in default for a small amount of money and the property was owned by the owners for more than 5 years. This makes me believe that there were other reasons other than high mortgage payments that are making some foreclose and I think that if the defaulted homeowner could have sold their home rather than foreclosing.

Alot of people took huge mortgages that is true. But lets pay attention to other factors that cost money. I know from my own personal finances that my mortgage is the easy part. I can afford it. I can afford the homeowners insurance and the taxes and I can afford to send my kids to private school and I can even afford to have cable in my house. But, the things that I find are so unaffordable are things like, health insurance, car insurance, liability insurance, Workman's comp, disability insurance and life insurance. Don't even let me get started on the price of gas...

Are you noticing the trend?

Insurance premiums are out of hand. In order for my husband and I to pay for our own health insurance (we are both self employed), it costs us $1072.00 a month for a family of four without meds! To be honest, my husband are so insuranced out, I think I have insurance just in case my other insurance does not pay. We are at the point where seriously we might be worth more dead than we are alive.

The other day there was an article in the NyTimes, - "Other Reasons Borrowers Falter" that was talking about the same thing...

"Meanwhile, delinquencies caused by too much personal debt, including insurance premiums, rose to nearly 14 percent, up from 11 percent, while delinquencies ascribed to health care and illness rose to about 21 percent, from about 19 percent."

The article goes on to also say

“If you come in at the edge of affordability,” she said, “and gas prices go up $100 a month, and insurance premiums go up, and then a water heater breaks, that’s the kind of thing that can put a family over the edge.”

Great point, we are all insurance poor no doubt...maybe us mortgage guys should jump-ship to start writing insurance policies :-0
Another reason homeowners are struggling is because of the credit addiction we have been riding. For the last decade the mantra has been to max out the credit cards and turn to the your homes equity to make it go away.

As long as property values continued to rise we could feed our addiction. One the property bubble "popped" homeowners found their selves holding a mountain of debt in a ticking time bomb mortgage.

I believe this is a huge market correction for the good, kicking any addiction is going to be hard ... as I sip my third cup of coffee :-0